Old Soldier, Not Fading Away.

Not content to retire from politics as an elder statesman with some small swatch of his dignity intact, Tom Sawyer seeks to alienate what’s left of the local party by filing an FEC complaint against Ohio 13 nominee Betty Sutton and EMILY’S List, alleging illegal coordination. Those of you doing a better job than me of keeping up with Lorain Morning Journal’s political reporting would have seen this coming:

Noting that the mailing addresses of Ohio Women Vote and Sutton's campaign use
the same Akron UPS office, Sawyer has suggested that the two may be more
coordinated than allowed by law.
''We are actively investigating a complaint,'' said Bill Burgess, an adviser to the campaign. ''We wouldn't be doing that if we didn't think there were grounds.''

I didn't know Burgess was working on the Sawyer campaign as well as Issue 1 in Akron. Good to know they are toiling so hard to keep their streak going.

It isn’t the first time EM-List has had to defend such a charge. This case in Florida actually provided more compelling facts – EM-List ran ads where the candidate did not. The FEC dismissed that complaint. I’ve found a total of four complaints where EM-L is a respondent. All have been dismissed.

In this case, the Occam’s Razor explanation is actually noncoordination. The mailings were ham-fisted, over-the-top riffs on statements Sutton had been making. Those of us who like Betty hated the mailings because they weren’t a reflection of her character. That’s what you would expect if a 527 was watching the race and developing materials based on the candidate’s platform. My read on Betty, based on the times I’ve talked to her, is that the mailings would have had a different tone if she had anything to say about them.

The complaint is not yet available. Presumably the factual allegation among the most compelling is the P.O. boxes. That issue is particularly silly. The UPS store in question is in Wallhaven, a retail/office district with lots of available space and plenty of coffee outlets – a prime spot for campaign offices. It’s about a block away from Sutton’s HQ in the Chem Workers building. Not much of a coincidence that OVW bought a mail drop there. If they had office space, Wallhaven would be a likely choice. If they didn’t, that UPS store is pretty much the best option. It’s cheaper than the Post Office, you can rent shorter term and the Walhaven location is convenient to everything and has ample parking. If they were trying to hide illegal coordination, getting a box across town would be the obvious move. Hell, if they were in any communication with the Sutton camp, they'd keep their mail drop as far from Betty as possible.

Past complaints give some indication of how EM-List goes about their business. In particular, check out their response to a complaint in Florida. EMILY’s List, the Washington office gives money to the candidate, provides training, what have you. Meanwhile, EM-List’s “project” Women Vote – and not clear if this is a subsidiary organization or an affiliate or a d/b/a – sets up shop in the jurisdiction in question as [State] Women Vote! and do whatever independent advocacy they deem appropriate. EM-List puts procedures in place whereby staff of EM-List proper and staff of Women Vote! don’t communicate.

I don’t know the extent of actual staffing for Ohio Women Vote. Based on a Google search, it doesn’t appear to have existed before the Sutton campaign. I know EM-List/OVW had people working in Akron because I ran into their canvassers Monday night in my neighborhood (who were nice to me even when I identified myself as Pho.)

Having had quite a throwdown with RussellPounderStaff over this issue, I see some value in Tom’s complaint. The FEC will investigate. If a preliminary investigation shows a reason to believe that the parties violated the law, the Commission will issue what I would have called a probable cause finding, but they oddly call a Reason to Believe finding. After that, a full-blown investigation, but I suspect this case (or Matter Under Re view or MUR)won’t get past the preliminaries.

EMILY’s List knows they wander the political landscape with a bullseye on their back. While I take serious issue with their tactics in this race, I don’t believe they are stupid and reckless enough to endanger their rep and a candidate’s viability by illegally coordinating. They have procedures in place to stay on the good side of the law and I expect they follow them scrupulously, just for the sake of survival.

I’ll try to follow the case, at least online, and report developments.